A SADDLEWORTH charity worker is soon to celebrate 10 years of helping pregnant refugees in Greece.
Sally Hyman, who lives in Springhead, set up the charity CRIBS International alongside friend Laurie Davidson a decade ago this October, in an effort to support mothers and pregnant women in Greece who have fled conflict and disasters.
The charity provides housing, health and feeding support, and assistance in navigating the country’s asylum system, and supports hundreds of families a month through their free shop.
Previously working as a teacher for students learning English as a second language, the topic of immigration has always been a cause near to Sally’s heart – but even more so after a volunteering trip in Greece showed her the conditions for asylum seekers firsthand.
“They were living in big canvas tents without any furnishings whatsoever, except for what they could possibly buy themselves,” Sally told Saddleworth Independent.
“You’d have women with no money sleeping on the ground, and the soil there has a high clay content, so when it would rain, it would get ruts and bumps and would harden in the 30 degree sun into clay.
“The camp I went to was called Ritsona, and it was about an hour and a quarter’s drive to Athens – it was basically a clearing in a forest with no public transport.
“I come from a family of asylum seekers myself. My grandfather and his parents and brothers and siblings came from Russia when he was a toddler.
“But I used to work at a whole series of schools in Oldham, and a lot of my students were new to the country. I’ve worked with asylum seekers all my life.”
Last year, more than 48,000 people arrived to claim asylum in Greece – a drop of 12,000 from the year before.
The vast majority hailed from Afghanistan, Egypt and Syria, and most are distributed on islands away from the mainland.
Until 2022, the most vulnerable asylum seekers were provided paid-for housing to help them rebuild their lives, though the scheme was scrapped at the end of the year after those who left the system faced an increased risk of homelessness and disruption to their lives.
What followed was the complete dominance of ‘camp-based’ accommodation, where those seeking asylum are instead forced to live in remote detention centres for months during processing.
Here, asylum seekers are provided for via local services and charitable organisations – but Sally says that in her experience, the support simply did not reach far enough.
She added: “There was no supplementation for the women that were bottle feeding. There was some hot milk delivered, but it was just cow’s milk.
“There was nowhere specialist to buy it, and it was delivered in a plastic cup, so it wasn’t clean.
“Bottle feeding in environments like that is really, really dangerous. You need an awful lot of clean water to be able to breastfeed safely – not bottled water, but tap water, because bottled water has high phosphorus, high calcium, and the baby’s kidneys can’t really cope with that. In the camp, it was really hard to keep the bottles clean.
“I remember there was a young Kurdish woman who was married to this guy who was never there, and she had two-year-old twins and a baby of six weeks in a tent. She was completely overwhelmed.
“Her kids were wild, absolutely wild, and I went to the tent to five her a hand. And at the back of the tent there was a bottle thrown away with maggots in it.”
Having grown frustrated with the lack of resources to help refugees, Sally took it upon herself to found CRIBS and provide direct support to mothers and pregnant women, as well as wider victims of gender-based violence.
The charity currently has six flats that are rented out to the most vulnerable families who approach them, who can stay until their baby is up to 12-months-old.
Alongside asylum, health, and food support, CRIBS also provides a free shop where refugees can take clothes and supplies free of charge.
CRIBS is now approaching its 10-year anniversary and is midway through planning a celebration in early October.
However, the cost to run the charity has remained sky-high for years – usually reaching £10,000 a month – and has so far been funded by donations, fundraising, and personal savings.
“The future for CRIBS has always been shaky, and it has been for the past ten years,” Sally said. “I’d really like to be able to go to bed and think, ‘Where can we find this next £10,000?’
“[Alongside our services], the other features that we wanted to develop are our research and data collections, because people need to know what’s going on.
“We need numbers and we need studies, so we can know that even if it doesn’t change anything, we’ve done the best we can.
“We’ve had ten years of housing women, moving them in, dealing with violent men, bedbugs, cockroaches, and dodgy landlords, and it all involves money, and people willing to help.
“If people have got a skill and some time and would love to go and spend some time in Athens for a few weeks, we can certainly work on that. People can do their own fundraisers, and we’ll support them with that and help them plan things.
“It’s a big ask, and we’re a tiny organisation. I get it. But it’s work that’s worth doing because if we can make the life of one woman good enough for her to be able to create a future for her children and herself that is not dominated by trauma, that is not dominated by poverty, is not dominated by forced sex work, then that’s work worth doing, right?”
More information on CRIBS International can be found on their website.
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